Cathy and Listers:
During the 1930s construction of Hoover Dam in southern Nevada, the Bureau
of Reclamation paid a local undertaker firm to relocated the entire cemetery
of St. Thomas, some 30 to 40 individual remains, to a new location outside
of the impending lake basin. Likewise in New Mexico or Texas Reclamation
paid for the relocation of small town cemetery threatened by raising lake
levels in the late 1980s. Descendents were contacted, archival analysis was
done along with complete bone studies with some interesting results. It
appears that some of the occupants had been involved in sheep/cattle range
wars and showed evidence of the violence that resulted in death; and nobody
had any heart burn over that. The name of this report slips my memory now
but you could probably contact Reclamation's Denver office.